Outlaw or Curb?

Blinking and snarling in the glare of publicity, the American Communist Party put in a miserable week. The House Un-American Activities Committee was holding hearings on a bill to outlaw the Communists lock, stock & barrel.

Witnesses testified that the C.P.U.S.A. was not a party but a conspiracy, an agency of Russia designed to weaken the U.S. Said FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover: "The Communist [he pronounced it Commonist] Party is a fifth column if there ever was one. It is far better organized than anything the Nazis had." But he felt that outlawing the party was no answer to the problem.

Eric Johnston, president of the Motion Picture Association of America and a man willing to give his opinion on any subject, concurred: "We must make sure that we don't chip away our freedoms to get at conspirators. ... It would be folly to do anything that in the long run proved as harmful as the things we seek to correct." His solution: ban Communists from office in unions, cooperatives and corporations.

Blue Eyes. Then into the committee room strode a big, tweedy, pipe-smoking man. He looked like the editor of a college press. He was Eugene Dennis, general secretary of the Communist Party. Appearing at his own request, he was armed with a 21-page statement. He had scarcely settled himself in his chair before he was in trouble.

Committee Investigator Robert E. Stripling asked him whether Dennis was his real name. That was quite irrelevant and incompetent, said Dennis. Had he ever taken out a passport in the name of Eugene Dennis? "Beside the point." How long had he been known as Dennis? "For a great, great many years." What name was he born with? "The color of my hair is grey, the color of my eyes is blue--"

Snapped Committee Chairman J. Parnell Thomas: "Never mind about the color of your eyes; you are out of order." Thomas ordered a subpoena served on Dennis to appear again on April 9. If he failed to answer, he could be held in contempt of Congress.

Six Aliases. Actually, Dennis' real name was well known to investigators. Born Francis Eugene Waldron in Seattle in 1905, he has used at least six aliases. As Frank Waldron he was arrested six times in five months during the stormy winter of 1929-30 in Los Angeles. Convicted of attempting to "rout" (a shade less serious than riot), he had jumped bail. At one time he had received a passport under the name of Paul Walsh.

He had seen party service abroad in Spain and Russia. He worked with the Communists in China, getting in & out "by somewhat informal means." In 1939, he was elected to the Communist National Committee from Wisconsin, becoming general secretary in 1946.

Despite Dennis, the Un-American Committee had sobered down at week's end. Chairman Thomas announced that plans for outlawing the Communists had been laid aside in favor of others curbing their activities. G.O.P. leaders promised another $50,000 for additional investigations. And the Communist Party, frantically calling for a "fighting fund" of $250,000, led off with a full-page ad for contributions in the "reactionary" New York Times and Herald Tribune (cost: $6,840).

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